Undoubtedly, there are a few athletes who can achieve amazing speeds. But I strongly suspect that MANY of the HPH claims that we see are exaggerated. Or that they amount to self-delusion. What I would suggest to anyone is to have a friend sit next to you, and count the number of hands you complete in 15 minutes. Then see what that comes out to per hour. And have the friend watch your play, and try to note any errors you make, too.
Personally, I think that I can do about 700 HPH without significant errors, under good conditions. With practice, I might be able to do better on a game with which I was very experienced, on a day when I was at my physical and mental peak.
Rather than work on pushing the limits on speed, I think that most players would be better off finding the pace at which they could play error-free. Squeezing in an extra 100 HPH is going to be greatly counterproductive, if at the cost of making even one serious error per hour.
Achievable speed is going to depend on many factors. It will be limited by the characteristics of the individual machine. While I can go at a good clip on a single line machine, I find that I'm much slower even on a three-play machine, just because of the rhythm of how the machine operates. It may be impossible to click past the paced display of results. It may be necessary to wait a beat before pressing the play button again. Sometimes pressing it early simply has no effect. Sticky buttons, of course, are the bane of our existence. Play too fast on one of those machines, and you'll get errors that have nothing to do with mentally making a wrong choice. Another example of a problem machine would be a wide-display machine such as is found at M Resort and various other places. I appreciate what they're trying to do by putting in big screens. However, it turns out that the card display extends beyond my field of vision, and I lose time having to dart left and right with my eyes to take it all in.
The game that one is playing is a big factor, of course. I maintain that you could train a chimp to play JOB. But most of us will be slower on something a lot more complicated, like Double Bonus.
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